I threw the vampire away from me and heard bones crack as she tangled in the cables above, conjuring a bright flash of light as her body instantly ignited from the current running through them. The flames turned from bright orange to deep red as she fell—dead and disintegrating—to the ground. I closed my eyes again and tried to dismiss the power that I had brought out. It coursed almost unstoppably through me, and after several seconds all I could do was diminish it slightly. I’d lost control, I needed time to concentrate. I opened my eyes and saw the parking lot where my uncle had parked the Charger, and I jumped off the trolley. I landed, skidding through the loose gravel, before collapsing and focusing on my power. It took a minute of coaxing it back down before I felt only the initial level of energy running through me that I had called upon at the warehouse.
There was a sickly quality to my aura now. Light throbbed and pulsed oddly, as if I couldn’t make up my mind whether I needed the strength or not. I dared not release it completely and risk passing out surrounded by vampires. I pushed myself off the ground and ran for the parking lot. Blood ran from the breaks in my skin and fell to the ground as I ran, steaming in the humid air. I made it to the Charger in seconds and crawled in, blood smearing onto the seat. My uncle could chew my ass later, I decided.
He’s gone, play.
My own voice echoed in my head. I could feel my power surge a little within myself, tempting me to cloak myself in the comforting warmth and power it offered. I shook myself put my seatbelt on.
The vampire had told me that he’d been captured. I couldn’t think about that right now, ludicrous as it seemed, I had to get back to the shop and dismiss my power. My body felt shaky, as if the raw energy had somehow eaten away at it. I pushed the key into the ignition and the engine rumbled to life. The Charger, somehow, gave me the distinct impression that it was unconcerned with my problems. I laughed aloud, bloody tears still streaming down my cheeks, and burned out of the parking lot and down the street back to the pawn shop as fast as the car could carry me. The most worrying thought that struck me though, as I drove, was that there was a clear and distinct part of me that wanted me to stop the car and go on a vampire killing rampage. A part that was making itself heard with every heartbeat that went by without me releasing my power.
*****
I pushed open the glass door of the pawn shop and stumbled in, leaning against a shelf of second-hand merchandise; I couldn’t catch my breath. Half way home my body had begun shaking violently and I had started hyperventilating—now I felt as if I was in the throes of a full on seizure. I collapsed onto my stomach and heaved, coughing up a small splash of blood. The blood sizzled on the tile and with my augmented vision I could see the golden light burning the tangible substance of the blood.
Biting back my horror, I shut my eyes tight and struggled to focus. My power was crackling violently through my body, and I couldn’t handle it any longer. I fought against the surging light pulsing from my body and pushed it down, deep down into myself. I wrestled against it with my will, until slowly the light faded to normal. Instantly I felt all of the wounds that had accumulated in and on my body from my fighting, and from the damage the rushing fire of my power had caused. I gasped in breathless agony, and darkness crawled in from the corners of my vision as I passed out. Before I lost consciousness, I recalled that this felt very familiar.
I woke to the sound of banging on the glass door. My uncle, I’d thought, and I flipped onto my back with a weary smile on my lips. About time he got back, but why is he banging on the door? I lifted my head and looked at the figure standing silhouetted against the pre-dawn smoky grey and orange sky. A petite woman wearing tight jeans and a hooded sweatshirt looked at me, her icy blue eyes burning into mine.
“Son of a bitch!” I croaked, and immediately regretted it. My throat felt as if I’d gargled salt and razor blades. I went into a coughing fit, and globules of curdled blood fell wetly to the floor.
“John, let me in.” Lily semi-shouted from the other side of the door. I struggled to my feet, and every bone in my body felt as if it was broken. My legs began to shake again. I slumped against the wall next to the door and cracked it open.
“Door’s open.” I mumbled.
“I have to be invited.” She said, her eyes going over my body as if she was looking at the twisted wreckage of a train.
“How ‘bout that…” I whispered, and the shaking had worked its way up my body into my arms and hands. “Where’s my uncle?”
“John, let me in. You’re hurt.” Lily said, pushing her face up to the crack in the door. “I can help you.”
“Answer… the question.” I said, and my jaw began to tighten as the muscles quivered.
“They got him, they captured him.” She said, looking down for a moment, and then back at my face. “Word’s going around the bay area like wildfire. John, let me in, it’s almost dawn. I’ve been knocking for an hour.”
“Yeah…” I said, and then doubled over in a coughing fit, falling away from the door. Lily slapped her hands against the door and looked down at me with a look very much like alarm. As I coughed, I thought of what my uncle had said about not trusting her. She looked pretty worried, but who knew? Maybe, I thought, she was working for the other vampires.
“John, let me in damnit!” She said, and I saw the first rays of light from the morning sun fall across the side of the building on the other side of the pawn shop. Tendrils of smoke began to drift up from the neck of her hoodie. I don’t know what made me do it just then, maybe the thought of a pretty girl burning up in front of me would be one more horror too many for my mind to handle.
“John!” She screamed this time and the smoke became more copious.
“C’mon in.” I managed to whisper between coughs as something like television static crawled in the corners of my eyes. Suddenly she seemed very far away.
She rushed inside and tore off her hoodie, exposing a pop culture zombie t-shirt beneath. Little black char marks spotted the skin of her bare arms and neck here and there, but faded rapidly as she escaped the brunt of the sun’s light.
“Jesus, John… What the hell happened to you…?” She knelt over me and I gave her what I felt was a charming smile.
“I rode the trolley today. Terrible crowd on trolleys.” I muttered before I slipped back into sweet unconsciousness.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I woke up slowly; feeling sheets pulled over me and the firm comfort of a mattress beneath me. I was in my room. My arm felt weird, and I ran my hand over it without opening my eyes. A needle was taped into my arm, and I felt the rubber tube that connected to it, pumping some fluid into my veins. I slowly opened my eyes and saw the bag labeled “High Calorie Glucose Solution” hanging over my bed. I stretched slowly, testing my limbs.
I felt sore all over, as if I’d been lifting weights all day with every muscle group. I pulled down my sheets, and saw that the many tears in my skin had been either butterfly bandaged or stitched closed, the thin stinging scabs marking my flesh here and there. Faint orange light crept in through a crack in my blinds, bringing great bruises ranging in hue from black to purple and yellow into stark relief on my body. I let out an involuntary moan, and moments later my door opened.
“About time.” Lily said, walking in with a bowl and washcloth. “You’ve been asleep about ten hours.”
“I was asleep before you came over. Maybe six hours before…” I said, my throat feeling substantially better than it had earlier. It was hard to place the events of last night on a timeline.
“Passing out probably saved your life.” She said and wet the wash cloth, wringing it out and yanking off my sheets.
“Hey!” I reached briefly for my sheets and my muscles all cramped immediately, rendering me immobile. I groaned again.
“Cute.” Lily said and started rubbing my face with the washcloth. It came away heavily soiled with dirt and dried blood. “Mister Modesty, who do you think undressed you and put you in bed?”
“Right,” I responded. “I don’t remember asking you to do that.”
“You say that like you had a choice.” She giggled, dipping her fingers in the water and flicking it at me. “Just relax and be glad I’m here.” She continued running the washcloth over my body, cleaning away residual filth from the night before. It hurt when she went over a bruise, but other than that it felt nice.
“Nice needlework.” I said, prodding one of the stitched up tears in my skin. “Why’d you wait until now for the sponge bath?”
“This is the second time I’ve washed you, actually.” She said, scrubbing a little too hard for a moment. “You were pretty filthy. Dirty boy.” She gave me a wink and rinsed out the washcloth.
“You said they captured him? My uncle, I mean.” I asked, growing slightly worried that a vampire was washing ash and dirt from me after I spent a night killing a bunch of her kind.
“There are a lot of stories going around right now. While you were making your daring escape, your uncle held off a bunch of really old vampires. Rumor has it that the Thanatic clan wanted you alive. Was Thanatos really there?” She asked, focusing now on scrubbing my legs and not meeting my eyes. I was silently grateful that she hadn’t removed my boxers.
“Yeah. He recognized my uncle and I, we had a nice little chat.” I said, frowning around the words as they came out. Anything that could subdue my uncle would be impossible for me to fight, especially worn out as I felt right now.
Lily uttered a few rapid words in what sounded like French, which I assumed to be rather nasty obscenities. “Unbelievable. What’s going on in this city?” She said more for her benefit than mine. She put the washcloth in the bowl of water and set it next to my bed.
“You tell me.” I said, and pushed myself up until I was sitting on the bed.
“I have no idea. Did he mention anything useful? Maybe where he was going to take you?”
“I didn’t have time to play twenty questions.” I said, feeling bitter and annoyed.
She pinched my leg and gave me another wink. “I’m going downstairs to make something to eat. When you can stand, you could still use a shower.” She mockingly waved her hand under her nose and left my room. I furrowed my brow and lifted my arm and found myself in agreement with my new vampire caretaker. Slowly I began moving my limbs, trying to get blood to run through the muscles, and eventually I was able to stand. I took the needle out of my arm and braced myself against the wall, making my way to my duffel which had been emptied. I sighed and opened the nearby chest of drawers and found my clothing neatly tucked away inside. I selected a fresh pair of boxers and made my way carefully to the bathroom.
I had to stop for a minute in front of the mirror. My skin looked thin and shrink-wrapped around my frame, as if all of my fat had been sucked out. My muscles even looked somewhat shriveled, as if I was on the verge of going into starvation. For a moment I thought I looked like the vampires I had escaped last night, my frame seeming emaciated and sickly. I shuddered and made my way into the shower, allowing the water to warm up before stepping in.
Lily was right about needing a shower. Soapy grey water collected around my feet, as well as the occasional scab. I cleaned myself gingerly for a while, and then satisfied, stood in the shower and let the hot water run over me for a while longer. My muscles gradually relaxed and more scabs fell, revealing thin pink lines of fresh new skin. I was glad that healing was now more of a minor inconvenience. I couldn’t imagine how long my injuries would have landed me in the hospital under normal circumstances, if I had even survived at all.
Feeling refreshed—though still a bit unsteady—I got out of the shower and dried myself. I brushed my teeth quickly (the shower hadn’t done anything for my breath,) and rubbed on some deodorant before heading downstairs. As soon as I opened the door to the living room I was overwhelmed by the smell of food cooking. My stomach twisted itself into knots as I walked to the kitchen door and opened it. Then I laughed.
Lily had baked a tray of hot pockets in the oven, and was stirring a gigantic pot of ramen noodles, the red plastic packages scattered around the counters and floor. She looked at me as I walked in and smiled.
“Just about finished. How do you feel?”
“Like death warmed over,” I said, popping my neck. “But I’ll live. I thought you were cooking?”
“I’m making do with what you have. Don’t you have any real food?” She asked, looking somewhat put off.
“There’s cereal in the cupboard over there,” I said, pointing. “Hot pockets are the cornerstone of any nutritious diet anyway.”
“Men.” She muttered, followed by a string of condemnatory French.
“Aren’t you from, you know, around Norway?” I asked.
“You mean when I was just a little girl?” She responded, grabbing plates out of the cupboard.
“Well yeah, my uncle said you were up there when he was a kid.”
She favored me with a smile and piled a few hot pockets onto my plate. “Ah, of course. Well, I came from a gypsy family. We traveled a lot, even in those days.” She looked wistful for a moment. “Ah, I spent my first century in and around France.”
“So you just adopted the language and accent?” I asked, blowing on a hot pocket as she followed me out of the room carrying a second plate and a salad bowl filled with steaming beef ramen.
“Yes, in much the same way your uncle speaks like an uneducated redneck.” She giggled and sat down on the couch next to the recliner I sat on; setting the dishes she was carrying on the coffee table.
I rolled my eyes and bit into my hot pocket. “Mmm. So why France?” I asked around a mouthful of pepperoni-flavored ecstasy.
“It’s such a beautiful language, and it was such a beautiful place. It was the last century of the renaissance when I lived there, and people were so alive. Oh, John, you cannot imagine the beauty of it.”
“Uh, are we talking about the time before the toilet was invented?” I asked, grinning.
“Please, I am not that old.” She replied sharply. “There were sewers many years before my birth, but you are right that it was a… somewhat different time as far as the standard of living is concerned.”
“Uh-huh. Sounds…” I hooked my fingers into quotation marks. “‘Beautiful,’ sure enough.” I said and ate the rest of my hot pocket and reached for another.
“Rude boy,” She scolded. “You think people are more advanced now than they were then? People were so close to the earth in those days—so involved with each other. Now you have to beat someone with a stick to get them to pay more attention to you than their cell phone, if they don’t run away the moment you speak to them. Your generation is the dullest, most antisocial and uninspired generation I have seen.” She smirked at me and then grabbed a hot pocket and bit into it.
I raised an eyebrow at her, “You uh… eat food?”
She looked at the hot pocket and chewed slowly, and then made a gagging sound and reached for her throat. I stood (stiff and awkwardly, of course,) and went over to help her and she burst out laughing as I reached for her, tugging me down onto the couch. It hurt a little. I said as much.
“Silly boy, of course I can eat food. It’s not necessarily sustaining, but I enjoy the taste on occasion. It’s much like you can eat chalk, even though it’s not nutritious. How much do you even know about vampires?” She asked in between laughing and chewing.
“I know how to kill them.” I said a little more angrily than I had intended, wincing as I adjusted myself on the couch to get comfortable. “And I know you drink blood. How much more is there to know?”
“Oh there’s so much more to know, my darling.” She said, smiling before taking a fork and spinning it in the bowl of ramen noodles.
“I’m just glad you burn in sunlight.”
She picked up her fork and ate the mouthful of noodles. “As opposed to what? Walking around unopposed in our superiority?”
“Nevermind…” I said, figuring the joke would be lost on her. She
gave me a quizzical look.
“Well, not all of us burn in the sun.”
“Oh, fantastic.” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. My uncle had already told me as much, but it was a different matter to hear it from the mouth of the subject in question.
“You think vampires as old as Thanatos fear the sun? He wouldn’t get as much as a tan. There are a couple clans in Asia that can withstand sunlight as well, even when they’re young.” She said, searching my face. I laughed briefly then let out a sigh, more in frustration than fatigue.
“Lily, I would love to have a lesson on all the various things about vampires that I should know with you, but don’t you think getting my uncle back should take priority?” I asked. She offered me a fork and nodded, standing up and stretching languidly. For an instant I forgot my food as her t-shirt raised and exposed a few inches of pale, flat stomach. She looked at me as I looked away and I mentally rebuked myself. I hoped she didn’t notice.
“Your uncle will be fine.” Lily said in pragmatic fashion. “They’re probably feeding on him to keep him weak so he won’t escape. You are in far more trouble than he is.”
My eyes widened in horror. Of course he was being fed on, and he wouldn’t be able to escape. I looked at her and narrowed my eyes.
“Of course you would know all about that. Won’t he be turned into a vampire?”
Lily shook her head. “No, it takes more than a week to turn a hunter of your breed. Normal people succumb in a single bite, rarely two or more, if we allow it. You are more resilient. Not something I knew in my youth.” She favored me with a smile, and I glimpsed her small sharp fangs. “We won’t let that happen to him.”
“We’re not going to leave him with them for a week.” I said. “Do you have a plan?”
The Chronicles of a Vampire Hunter (Book 1): Red Ashes Page 14
